PDP, Labour Party, slam Tinubu’s New Year broadcast

Both the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP), the major opposition parties, in separate reactions, have criticized the New Year broadcast of President Bola Tinubu

The LP said it is appalled by the hollowness of the New Year speech by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

If anything, the party said, the speech conveyed to Nigerians the high level of hypocrisy, deceit, and lack of empathy that has become the guiding principle of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

According to the party, it is depressing to note that the President and his handlers did not deem it fit to include a word of comfort for the families of over 200 people killed by terrorists during the Christmas Eve massacre in Plateau State.

In a statement signed by Obiora Ifoh, Labour Party’s National Publicity Secretary, it states: “The President’s helplessness in the face of his glaring failure to address the critical issues of insecurity, decayed infrastructure, the collapse of the manufacturing and productive sectors, inflation, and the naira to the dollar exchange rate, which is spiraling out of control, is written all over the speech.

“There was no word about the alleged massive looting of the nation’s resources by appointees and party leaders in various sectors. Most disturbing for us is the President’s false claim that ‘everything I have done in office, every decision I have taken and every trip I have undertaken outside the shores of our land since I assumed office on 29 May 2023, has been done in the best interest of our country.’ What a despicable form of deceit!

In a similar move, The PDP described the New Year speech by President Bola Tinubu as a “harvest of deceit, false claims and empty promises”.

In a statement, Debo Ologunagba, PDP’s National Publicity Secretary, described Tinubu’s speech on Monday as uninspiring and a waste of valuable time as it did not address any of the critical issues plaguing the nation.

“Nigerians were dismayed as President Tinubu employed rhetoric and failed to address the critical issues of insecurity, decayed infrastructure, comatose manufacturing, and productive sectors; crushing 28% inflation rate; a continuing plunge of the Naira; alarming unemployment; excruciating poverty; and economic hardship occasioned by the reckless, ill-advised, and insensitive policies and programmes of his administration, the opposition party stated.

PDP publicity scribe described as an unpardonable assault on the sensibility of Nigerians for Tinubu to assert that “everything I have done in the office, every decision I have taken and every trip I have undertaken outside the shores of our land, since I assumed office on May 29, 2023, has been done in the best interest of our country.”

According to him, “On the contrary, all decisions and actions of the Tinubu Presidency, including the approval of an increase in the pump price of fuel from N167 to over N700 per litre, the devaluation of the naira with the consequential high costs and hardship, the skewing of the 2024 budget in favour of the luxury appetite of the Presidency and APC leaders without concrete policies to revive the economy and create jobs; the wasteful foreign trips with political cronies and failure to address the mindless killings across the nation cannot be said to be in the interest of our country.”

He added that Tinubu’s statement that his actions and policies are in the interest of the nation further confirmed that this administration is allegedly subjecting Nigerians to hardship as a way to suppress them into surrendering to totalitarianism.